'ANGELS' IS SMALL TRIUMPH.

Byline: Katherine Karlin Correspondent

YOU HAVE TO hand it to lilybeau productions. Not only has this gutsy actors' collective taken it upon itself (in collaboration with Open at the Top Productions) to present Tony Kushner's two-play, six-hour apocalyptic epic, ``Angels in America,'' but it has done so when the star-heavy HBO broadcast is still fresh in the memory. If that weren't enough, this production is staging the two plays, ``Millennium Approaches'' and ``Perestroika,'' in alternating performances.

Kushner's plays are a cataract of words. His characters revel in language; angels may prophesy, but that talent is nothing next to the human capacity to articulate.

Seeing ``Angels in America'' on stage restores some immediacy to the play. And unlike the film, the lilybeau staging squarely emphasizes Prior Walter, a young man with AIDS who is abruptly abandoned by his lover. With sharp features that radiate intelligence, David H. Ferguson plays Prior with a dose of self-pity leavened by humor and rage. Even in the grip of his disease, this Prior is more alive than most of us, his anger and imagination in a constant spin.

As Louis, Prior's faithless lover, Jamie Rogers is an overeducated, underemployed nebbish who expects little from life and is surprised to find it. Rogers cocks his head to listen to the sound of his own voice; he is as cerebral and self-conscious as Prior is feral. In the hands of these actors, Prior and Louis emerge as two parts of the self, constantly at odds yet fundamentally connected.

The rest of the cast is competent, if not as riveting. Thia Stephan plays Harper, the Valium-popping Mormon housewife, with a wry wit. As her conflicted husband, Jim Lunsford is suitably bland when called for; when he finally erupts, the transformation is startling.

Playing real-life Roy Cohn, the powerful, closeted right-wing attorney, Jeffrey Cabot Myers relies too much on shtick in ``Millennium Approaches.'' In the second play, as Cohn dies an excruciatingly lonely death, Myers seems to find the soul of the character, but we never get a feel for what made Cohn so formidable. Amanda Karr does multiple duty here: She is most successful as Cohn's nemesis, Ethel Rosenberg, delivering a keening kaddish in his hospital room. But as the Mormon matriarch Hannah Pitt, she looks like a young woman trying to dress dowdy. And Karr, under the direction of Karesa McElheny, decides to play the two prologues (as an aged rabbi and an even more aged Bolshevik) strictly for laughs, and nearly unintelligibly.

The toughest task falls to Dejon Mayes as Belize, an ``ex ex-drag queen'' and night nurse whose depth of compassion could make anyone believe in angels. Mayes may not bring all of Belize's complexity to the surface, but he has a wonderful physical presence; he shields Prior with his huge arms as with an unfolding of wings.

ANGELS IN AMERICA - Three stars

Where: NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.

When: ``Millennium Approaches,'' 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1:30 p.m Sunday. ``Perestroika,'' 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday; through April 10.

Tickets: $25 for each play. Call NoHo Arts Center, [phone], Ext. 5.

In a nutshell: An intimate setting and strong leads provide a fresh revival of this epic.